This was one of the best shows I’ve been to in a long time. Funnily enough, I didn’t even really knew what it was. For her birthday, Sharon advertised an Ingrid Michaelson show and I was on board. Granted, I only started out knowing who Ingrid Michaelson was because of that “here take my sweater” song that was on a ubiquitous Old Navy commercial pre-Christmas 2007. But after she did a show earlier this year, I checked her out and decided she was all kinds of good.

Lo and behold, the Hotel Café tour is not just Ingrid, but a whole mess o’ people: Cary Brothers (one guy, not some brothers), meiko, William Fitzsimmons, Jim Biano, Jessie Baylin, and one last lady I can’t remember except that her first name is Jessca, not Jessica.

The line-up was mixed, so you’d get two or three songs from each performer, and then one of the earlier performers came on again for two more songs. I found this a bit confusing, since I didn’t know all of the performers, so I can vaguely remember that there was some breathy chic and then the other lady with the weird puffy hair.

There was a very cool vibe from the performers – it seemed like they’d all gotten along really well on the tour and were just having a lot of fun being together. On many of the songs, one of the other acts would chime in. For example, Ingrid had all of the ladies come on stage with her to do around, which was quite beautiful. She said that there just aren’t enough rounds in pop music, and I agree! Pip pip!

The best bits were:

the entire ensemble filed out into the middle of the crowd and did an acoustic song

meiko did a cover of No Scrubs

Ingrid Michaelson covered Radiohead’s Creep, all sweet and pretty

the show ended with the whole group singing The Rainbow Connection, which I recognized at the very first plunky-plunky-plunky-plunky-plunk. Even though it wasn’t banjolicious. Still. It tugged on my wee childhood heartstrings.